ABSTRACT

The United Nations (UN) has been handed the task of building institutions of democratic self-government in Kosova while administering the territory in the interim.1 This is a novel task for the UN and, not unexpectedly, it has run into severe difficulties. The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosova (UNMIK) is facing persistent problems in the areas of security, rule of law, ethnic and political polarization and economic reconstruction and reform. These problems stem from the trauma, inter-ethnic enmity and destruction caused by Belgrade’s campaign of ethnically-based murder and expulsion in Kosova, NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and a decade of institutionalized apartheid and repression against Albanians countered by a mass-based Albanian secessionist movement; the legacy of a failed socialist economy with no serious efforts at genuine reform and an aggressive, authoritarian regime ruling Serbia. Faced with the daunting problems that have resulted as a consequence of these troubled legacies, UNMIK is putatively making efforts to build an interim administration to handle the dayto-day governing of Kosova while concurrently introducing measures to facilitate economic reconstruction, foster the growth of civil society and build institutions of self-government. However, as developments so far have shown, the path to achieving these goals is laden with a host of obstacles that have caused considerable frustrations among international actors and the Kosovar population.